Methodology

The Statistical Institute of Catalonia (Idescat) offers information in relation to the names of babies born in Catalonia. This information is similar to that provided by other statistical institutes in Europe, which include the Belgium's National Institute of Statistics, Norway?s National Statistics Institute, and the Spanish National Statistics Institute (INE).

This database shows the frequency of the different names of boys and girls. The data can be viewed by searching for a specific name and finding out how frequently it appears in the population as a whole. This information can be obtained for the whole of Catalonia, by provinces, by areas of the Territorial Plan and by counties, and also by sex and year of birth.

It should be explained that the source used to produce the database of children's names contains the names in capital letters without accents. This means that in some cases it is not possible to differentiate between names in Catalan and Spanish, when the accent is the only differentiating feature.

This affects, for example, the ranking of names of babies. Maria also includes María, while Anna is treated differently to Ana.